Good Friday Meditation 2011

(EXPLANATION: Last night I was one of five laypersons and two clergy who offered reflections on the "Seven Words from the Cross," an annual service held at Central Christian Church in Fairmont, WV. My choice was the first word:)

A brief word of background is in order: we really don’t know what Jesus said as he hung on the cross. These sayings attributed to him were not written down until forty or fifty years after the crucifixion. This first word, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” appears in five of the earliest manuscripts of Luke’s Gospel available to us, but it does not appear in six others, and many have wondered why the earliest copies of the New Testament are divided as to whether Jesus spoke this word or not. Some of what Jesus said and did was, no doubt, passed down untainted from the original witnesses, but other reports about Jesus may have emerged in the imaginations of the later Christian communities.

Even so, what is truly significant is that all of these stories, biographical or imaginary, depict the same qualities of Jesus character: his absolute trust in God, his compassion and loving heart that went out to others, especially the outcasts and oppressed, the weak, young and broken; his straight-forwardness and courage in the face of opposition; as well as other life-affirming attributes.

Yet, in spite of that, I’m often painfully aware how the story of Jesus gets twisted to say what people want it to say. The history of the church is rife with doctrines and beliefs and practices that turn the Jesus story of amazing love and grace for all life into self-serving systems that count some as deserving of places of honor above others, even to the point sometimes of tragically justifying vicious abuse of others. How often have we all heard statements like: “Unless you believe and practice faith as we do, then you’re doomed?” Or as one church member said to me, “I know I’m going to heaven, but I’ll pray for you.”

Indeed, this twisting of the life and message of Jesus began almost as soon as he died, was buried, and arose from the dead. The first Christians were Jewish, and in no time at all disagreements between the Jewish Christians and the other Jewish denominations (Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, the Priests) became major conflagrations until the Christians finally separated from their Jewish forebears and even went so far as to accuse the Jews of killing Jesus. (By the way, I have some good news: it wasn’t the Jews. Jesus was put to death by the Roman occupation army—period! Jesus created a scene in the Temple that disrupted the Pax Romana, the Roman Peace, and the Roman authorities always moved swiftly to signs of civil unrest and potential rioting. Nothing personal, Jesus, but look and act like an insurgent and, if we can get our hands on you, the consequence will be immediate: crucify him.)

Right from the very start of this thing called Christianity, the example and teachings of Jesus were manipulated and contorted so as to show preference for some over others, to justify positions of power and privilege, so much so that it is easy to hear Jesus saying throughout these 2000 years as he may have said to the Roman soldiers at the foot of the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

So what is forgiveness? Isn’t it to be able to “let go”? By no stretch of the imagination, is that easy. My 46 years of serving congregations are filled with memories of power struggles and deceptive ploys that made the ministry more difficult than I ever envisioned it would be at the start. To this day, I awake some mornings having dreamt about some of those episodes, obviously still not able to let them go, and in the process I still feel wounded because of my letting-go inability. You probably find that hard to understand.

Sometimes it’s an inability of letting go of the pain; sometimes it’s an inability of letting go of presumptive power and prestige. Thomas and Alexander Campbell, the father and son duo that founded this denomination, the Disciples of Christ, had as their grand vision and hope the reunification of all the scattered denominations into one body, bringing an end to Christian separatism and the supposed superiority that leads to disunity. That dream is one of your denomination’s notable contributions to church history. Yet, when in the 1970s the Disciples joined with eleven other Protestant churches to produce the same curriculum materials to be used in their various denominational Sunday Schools jointly (the project was called CE:SA—Christian Education: Shared Approaches), your denominational officials in submitting the materials to the Diciples’ publishing house, made an editorial change that was rather cute: every time mention was made of Jesus speaking to his disciples, the word “Disciple” was capitalized, unintentionally perhaps, but nevertheless suggesting that when Jesus speaks, it’s just to the (capital D) “Disciples,” not to Presbyterians or Episcopalians.

But not all claims to dominance are harmless. One of the most difficult congregations I served was during the late eighties. It is located in a Jerusalem-like capitol city, Charleston, WV. Capitols and their surroundings, even their churches, have a way of cultivating a certain air of superiority, even arrogance perhaps. My pastorate there lasted four years, years laden with conflict and confusion consisting of behind-the-scenes plotting, secret petitions for my removal, unkind anonymous letters, slashed tires, and on one occasion a telephone call in the middle of the night threatening my life. Now these were not bad people, rather they were people who were convinced that they knew the only right way to follow Christ. Consequently, their actions were reasonable because, after all, God was on their side and their righteous cause justified any means whatsoever to bring about God’s ends. The only time I have returned to that church was a year ago to attend a funeral service of one of its beloved members, John Charnock, the City Attorney when I was in Charleston and a genuinely good man.

One of the areas of conflict while there involved the choir director. He was particularly enamored of the then popular Sandy Patti, a contemporary country Christian music star, and his goal was to turn the worship services into look-alike Sandy Patti concerts. His vision of these productions was bound to clash with my highly-liturgical sensibilities, and despite attempts to mediate some common ground, he saw me as an obstructionist to God’s leading, and I saw him as a guy who was sure there was only one right way who wouldn’t listen to other views. I did not object to the use of new tunes and rhythms, nor to the use of other musical instruments. My problem was with the lyrics and what I considered to be “stinkin-thinkin” faith understandings. Perhaps if I had been more acquiescent, I would have decided that no one pays attention to the words anyway. But I couldn’t bring myself to really believe that. In time, the choir director moved on to another church. But I paid a heavy cost in terms of congregational support in that conflict, which then fused into other areas of disagreement. To this day I continue to harbor anger at all that happened in Charleston.

Jesus truly possessed a quality of compassion and understanding that could let-go, that could genuinely reach out to those who were inflicting the cruel torture of crucifixion and forgive them. Deeply desiring to be a disciple of this same Jesus, I wish I could let-go and forgive as he did!